Secret Agents 101: Crafting

Ah the long awaited, Secret Agents Crafting post….where I give you the how tos and break down each and every item available to craft, so you don’t miss a thing!

Love it or hate it, EA has proven over the last couple of years that crafting is here to stay. While the prizes themselves are pretty self explanatory, collect this to earn these prizes, crafting is a whole other “animal”. Crafting requires some self direction. You decide what you want and collect the items to craft accordingly. Sometimes this is successful and sometimes it’s not. And, as with all things, for some events crafting is easier than others.

Now I know some of you still have questions about what to craft, if you should craft or Level Up, what happens in future Acts…so, as we’ve done in the past, we’re here to break it all down for you. So let’s take a look at the basics of Crafting for the entire event.

So as we’ve seen with the last couple of Events, EA has finally got a system down where crafting is pretty self explanatory. So I’m not going to go into a long discourse about how to craft, what to do etc. I’ll just give you a few basics…for clarity sake.

Crafting is triggered via the Hidden Research Facilityduring the Act 1 questline…

Tapping the Research Facility will bring you to the crafting menu. You can also access the crafting menu via the event hub menu by clicking the trophy (Martini..shaken not stirred) icon and then the Schematics icon…

Crafting consists of different levels. Each level unlocks more items to craft. You spend crafting currency to level up. And once again they’ve decided to stick with what’s worked in the most recent events, you do NOT have to choose between Leveling up and Crafting. The Schematics you spend to Craft items will count towards the Schematics needed to Level up!

What does this mean? Well basically if it costs 180 to move up to the next level, and you want to craft the Bus Shelter (which cost 40 each)..you don’t have to decide between Leveling up and Crafting. Simply craft the Bus Shelter and the 40 will be deducted from the 180 required to Level Up.

Similarly…you DO NOT HAVE TO CRAFT ITEMS TO LEVEL UP. You can level up by simply tapping the green button next to the level up bar.

It still takes Schematics, but it prevents you from crafting a bunch of stuff you may not want in order to level up. As some of you have been complaining…

So the choice is yours, you can level up as you craft items. Or you can just level up without crafting items.

And as with previous events, crafting ends when the event is over. So you have all 3 acts to craft. There’s no rush to get it done now. Personally, i’ve been stock piling my crafting currency to do one big crafting push at one time (especially since it’s harder to come by). There’s no benefit to crafting early and there’s no benefit to crafting later. It’s your preference.

And finally, there are 12 total crafting levels. You’ll start at Level 1 so you’ll need to level up 11 times (to reach level 12), on order to unlock all of the craftable items. Here’s the breakdown of how many Schematics are required to reach each level and unlock new items:

Level to
Reach

Schematics
Required To
Reach

2

180

3

355

4

540

5

910

6

1,290

7

1,650

8

2,575

9

3,960

10

4,895

11

6,515

12

7,680

So now that we’ve gone over those basics, let’s get to why most of you are reading this post…the breakdown of each craftable item.

Let me preface this by saying, for this event most of the craftable items are decorations. Therefore, what to craft and how many is entirely up to you…as to what you think will work best in your Springfield. There are some great decorations that can work in a variety of ways in Springfield, but it’s up to you to determine what works best for your town.

Now here’s the breakdown:

Item: Fragrant Spy-acinthsRequired Level: 1Schematic Cost: 50 Size: 1×3Conform-O-Meter: Tree-Hugging +100What Does it Do: Animated when tapped. Spy pops out from under the sunflower, looks around and goes back downUnique?: No.

Item: Manhole StationRequired Level: 3Schematic Cost: 30 Size: 1×1Conform-O-Meter: Vanity +100What Does it Do: Animated when tapped. Raises out of the ground to reveal a fingerprint scanner/tunnelUnique?: No.Awesome Side Point: You can put this on the road (like the barriers). Probably one of the cooler things you can craft.

Item: Castle HQRequired Level: 12Schematic Cost: 1800 Size: Same as HQConform-O-Meter: Same as HQWhat Does it Do: A SKIN/FACADE for your HQ building. NOT a new building for Springfield, just a skin/Facade to change the appearance of your HQ.Unique?: Yes

My Personal Opinion on Craftables…
Don’t kill yourself. Most of this stuff is just decorations and really unimpressive. Craft what you like/think you can use in your town…but really nothing is worth kill yourself over.

Best item? It’ll vary depending on your opinion of things. But I like the little things for Springfield, like the bus shelter, mailboxes and manhole covers. Also, the Parachute drop cracks me up…

Worst stuff? Personally I’ll be skipping the Auxiliary HQ and Castle Skin…just have no use for them. 1 HQ is enough and I have plenty of Castles in Springfield. So no level 12 necessary for me.

So again…don’t kill yourself trying to get all this stuff. Sometimes less is more. Craft what you have use for in Springfield….

Hope that helps some of you who have been stressing out over crafting!

And there you have it my friends…the details behind Secret Agent Crafting!

What are your thoughts on crafting for the Secret Agent Event? Which items are you digging? Which would you pass on? Sound off in the comments below, you know we love hearing from you!

Was there an update to the “Schematics Required to Reach” a new level? I was trying to game-plan how I’m going to waste Schematics to level up and craft the things I want, but my numbers appear a lot lower than what is in the grid. I don’t have a full set of level-numbers to compare to, but I just leveled up from Level 9, which required 935 Schematics, to Level 10, which says it will require 1620 Schematics.

Great to know the last one is only a skin, I would not have been too thrilled if I’d crafted it. I wasn’t going to craft a drill, it didn’t look that great to me, but with the animation it has I know I have to get one now 😂 It’s good to know what the “weiner wall” is, I could not figure out wth that was on the bottom 😂😂 Thank you for the hard work, this was definitely a must read 😊😊😊

There is a benefit to crafting earlier if you’re working on increasing your tree-hugging and/or vanity levels. I’ve crafted a bunch of the Spyacinths and my level have increased from that. Plus they’re pretty. Otherwise I try to just get at least one of everything for collecting’s sake.

So far, I’m mostly the Spy-acinths, and then just because I’d rather get something than just pay to level up. Those give tree-hugging, which isn’t critical for me, but there are so many things out there that give vanity (basically anything that doesn’t have an obvious category, and lots that do) that it just isn’t of value to me.

With enough tree-hugging I can sell off some items that I purchased early on just to complete my conform-o-meter. More importantly, these give me more options for tree-hugging.